LOVE MINDANAO: A JOURNEY FROM FEAR TO PURPOSE

When a place you never intended to love becomes the place that awakens your heart, defines your purpose, and changes your life forever.

Where Do I Begin?

Writing has never been my passion—especially when it comes to technical papers, reports, and other work-related documents. Like many people, I write because the job requires it. I put down what needs to be said, accomplish what needs to be done, and end with a period. Exclamation point!

Touched down Bancasi Domestic Airport-Butuan

But today, I find myself wanting to write for an entirely different reason. Not because someone asked me to. Not because there is a deadline to beat or a report to submit. This time, I write because there is something inside me that needs to be heard.

I want to tell a story. A story about places that change us, people who awaken something within us, and experiences that force us to see the world differently. A story about my so-called life on the road—a journey that began with uncertainty, was shaped by unexpected encounters, and eventually gave birth to a love I never imagined I could have.

For years, many people on Facebook have known me by a name: Love Mindanao.

But who, really, is Love Mindanao?

Is it merely a username? A sentimental expression? A name I chose because I happened to live in Mindanao? Or is it something deeper—a declaration of love for a land too often misunderstood, a people too often judged, and communities whose stories deserve to be heard?

I could spend hours trying to explain what this name means to me. But perhaps the best way to understand it is to go back to where everything began.

Because before there was Love Mindanao, there was a man who was afraid.

And before there was a mission, there was a leap of faith.

MISTAKE, CHOICE, OR DESTINY?

It began with a phone call.

My employer asked whether I would be interested in working in Surigao del Sur, a province on the eastern side of Mindanao. At that time, I had never set foot on the island. Everything I knew about Mindanao had come largely from what I had seen and heard through television, newspapers, and other influential media sources.

And the picture they had painted was frightening.

Kidnappings. Insurgencies. Armed conflict. Abu Sayyaf. Stories of danger that seemed to turn an entire region into a place to be feared rather than understood.

My first reaction was disbelief. Why would anyone willingly move to a place associated with so much danger? Why would I leave the comfort of familiar surroundings for a destination I knew almost nothing about?

Under ordinary circumstances, I would probably have declined the offer without a second thought.

But life has a strange way of bringing us to crossroads when we least expect them.

At that point in my life, I had just come from a devastating personal experience. I was hurting, trying to gather the scattered pieces of myself, and struggling to find a way forward. I needed distance from everything familiar. I needed a change of scenery, a different environment, and perhaps a reason to begin again.

Maybe I was running away.

Maybe I was searching for something.

Or maybe, without realizing it, I was being led toward something I had yet to discover.

I was a grown man, free to make my own decisions. So, almost impulsively, I accepted the job.

JOB ACCEPTED!

Some people thought I was reckless. Others probably thought I had lost my mind. Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether there was a little truth in both.

Perhaps I was being brave. Perhaps I was being foolish. Perhaps I was simply desperate enough to believe that somewhere, far from the life I knew, I might finally find the space to heal.

Whatever the reason, I made my choice.

And just like that, my journey to Mindanao began.

THE FIRST STEP INTO THE UNKNOWN

I left my family in Cavite and headed toward a place I could barely locate on a map. I had no real understanding of what awaited me. I had never been so nervous in my entire life, yet beneath the fear was an inexplicable excitement.

What was I thinking?

Even I could not answer that question.

The next thing I knew, I had landed at Bancasi Airport in Butuan City.

The airport was small compared with the modern terminals I was accustomed to in Manila. Everything felt unfamiliar. I had crossed into a part of the country that, until then, existed mostly in my imagination—an imagination shaped more by secondhand accounts than by personal experience.

There was no turning back now.

I called my boss, whom I had met only briefly during an interview in Manila. Most of our communication had been virtual, so I was not even sure I would recognize him in a crowd.

Fortunately, he found me first.

And there I was, standing on Mindanao soil for the very first time.

Butuan City.

I had barely heard of it before. I certainly had never imagined that this unfamiliar city would become the gateway to a chapter of my life that would profoundly change me.

Like many people who had never visited Mindanao, I arrived carrying my own assumptions. I expected the people to be different from those I had known in Luzon and the Visayas. I imagined that I would struggle to fit in, that I would be treated as an outsider, and that the cultural differences would make it difficult for me to find my place.

I was afraid of the people before I had even met them.

And that realization, though it came later, would become one of the most important lessons of my life.

Because the moment I began speaking with the locals, my assumptions started to crumble.

They were warm. They were accommodating. They were friendly. They were ordinary people going about their lives, working hard, raising families, earning a living, and welcoming a stranger who knew almost nothing about their home.

They were not the frightening stereotypes I had carried with me.

They were people.

People whose humanity had never needed to be proven to me in the first place.

I began to feel something I had not expected: comfort. A sense of belonging. A quiet reassurance that perhaps I was not as far from home as I had imagined.

Sometimes, the first thing a place changes is not your life. It is your perception.

We stopped for a meal at Mang Inasal near the city proper, which my colleagues referred to as Ciudad. Everyone around me seemed to speak Bisaya or Cebuano. The language barrier suddenly became very real.

Would I be able to communicate? Would I be able to adjust? Would I ever feel that I belonged?

My colleagues assured me that people could understand Tagalog and that I simply needed to let them know when I had difficulty following a conversation.

It was a small reassurance, but I needed it.

Then we continued our journey toward the workplace.

They had told me that our quarters were a little far from the city.

A little far?

I had no idea what that meant.

We traveled for nearly six hours. Six long hours of trees, rice fields, rough roads, remote settlements, and military checkpoints. The farther we went, the more the familiar world seemed to disappear behind me.

The landscape was beautiful in its own way, but I could not fully appreciate it. My mind was too occupied with questions, fears, and the growing realization that I had committed myself to a life I knew absolutely nothing about.

By the time we reached San Miguel, Surigao del Sur, darkness had settled over the town. Only a few houses glimmered along the road.

I looked around and felt my expectations collapse.

There were no grand buildings. No familiar conveniences. No nearby restaurants or bars where I could escape after work. No trace of the comfortable, predictable environment I had left behind.

What had I gotten myself into?

I was tired, anxious, and overwhelmed. My mind kept searching for reasons to regret my decision. I could not speak the local language fluently. I did not know the community. I did not know what the coming days would bring.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, the frightening stories I had heard about Mindanao continued to whisper.

But turning back was no longer an option.

I had come too far to quit before I had even begun.

That evening, my Chinese colleagues welcomed me into the office. We shared dinner and a modest welcome drink. Their hospitality helped ease the tension that had followed me throughout the journey.

Exhausted, I excused myself and went to rest.

I needed sleep.

I also needed to prepare myself for whatever the morning would reveal.

---

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

My first morning in San Miguel began with the unmistakable sounds of rural life: hungry pigs and roosters announcing the arrival of a new day.

It was my first sunrise in this unfamiliar place.

After breakfast, I sat down with my boss to discuss expectations and responsibilities. But before I could begin the work I had been hired to do, I knew I needed to understand something more fundamental.

I needed to understand the environment.

And by environment, I did not mean merely the trees, rivers, roads, forests, or physical landscape. I meant the whole living world around me: the people, the communities, their livelihoods, their struggles, their aspirations, and the natural resources upon which their lives depended.

I wanted to see the place for myself.

Accompanied by my Chinese colleagues, I began my first tour of the area.

I thought I was simply familiarizing myself with my new workplace.

I had no idea that what I was about to witness would change the direction of my life.

THE MOMENT MY HEART AWAKENED

There are moments when words fail us.

Moments when the mind struggles to comprehend what the eyes are seeing, when the heart feels something so powerful that the body responds before we can explain why.

For me, that moment came during my first community visit.

I looked around, and something inside me broke open.

My body trembled. My eyes filled with tears. I stood there, overwhelmed by what I was witnessing, unable to find the words to describe it.

It was not simply sadness.

It was not pity.

And it was certainly not the satisfaction of feeling fortunate to have a more comfortable life elsewhere.

What I felt was much more complicated—and much more demanding.

I saw children hungry for knowledge, children whose curiosity and eagerness to learn deserved far more opportunities than their circumstances seemed to offer. I saw a community with a nonfunctional health center, where access to basic health services was a challenge. I saw difficult roads, damaged bridges, and the physical isolation that could separate families from schools, health facilities, markets, and other essential services.

I saw people trying to make a living from the resources around them, including timber plantations such as falcata, while living with the challenges of inadequate infrastructure and limited access to opportunities.

And I began to understand that the story of Mindanao was far more complex than the story I had been told before arriving.

Behind the headlines were human lives.

Behind the images of conflict were children who wanted to study, parents who wanted their families to live decently, and communities that wanted the chance to build a better future.

Behind the word Mindanao were countless stories of resilience, dignity, hardship, and hope that could never be captured by a single news report.

I stood there, silent.

I could not pretend that I understood everything I was seeing. I had only just arrived. I did not know the full history of these communities, the structural problems they faced, or the many forces that had shaped their circumstances.

But I knew that I could no longer look at this place through the same eyes.

For the first time, I understood that loving a place means being willing to see both its beauty and its pain.

I had come to Mindanao hoping to escape my own suffering.

Instead, I found myself face-to-face with realities that demanded more than my sympathy.

They demanded my attention.

They demanded that I listen.

They demanded that I ask difficult questions about inequality, access to education, health services, infrastructure, environmental protection, and the distribution of opportunities.

And, above all, they challenged me to consider what I could do with the skills, knowledge, and opportunities I had been given.

In that moment, the fear I had carried from home began to give way to something else.

Hope.

Not the passive kind of hope that simply wishes things will get better, but the kind that unsettles you, keeps you awake, and makes it impossible to remain indifferent.

Hope that insists that things can change.

Hope that asks what role we are willing to play in making that change happen.

Hope that transforms compassion from a feeling into a responsibility.

My heart was no longer merely reacting to what I saw. It was awakening to what I could no longer ignore.

I AM NEEDED HERE

On our way back, I could not stop thinking about the communities we had visited.

Their faces stayed with me. The children. The families. The people who continued to work and persevere despite the difficulties surrounding them.

I kept replaying the images in my mind, trying to understand why they had affected me so deeply.

And then, in the quiet of that unfamiliar place, a thought began to take shape.

Perhaps I had not come here simply to find a new job.

Perhaps this journey was not merely an escape from a painful chapter of my life.

Perhaps there was a reason I had been brought to this place at this particular moment.

I do not claim to have heard a literal voice. It was more like an insistent conviction rising from somewhere deep within me—a realization that would not let go.

Stay.

Look closer.

Listen to their stories.

Learn from their lives.

Do not turn away.

I sat at my temporary table, staring into nothingness, thinking about everything I had seen and everything I had yet to understand.

Then the decision came.

I would stay.

Not because I was no longer afraid, but because fear was no longer the only thing I could feel.

Not because I believed I could solve every problem, but because I had begun to understand that doing nothing was not the only option available to me.

Not because I suddenly knew what my future would look like, but because I had found something worth working toward.

I AM NEEDED HERE.

I HAVE A PURPOSE HERE.

And perhaps, in ways I could not yet fully understand, this was where I needed to be.

I had come to Mindanao carrying a wounded heart, searching for a place where I could begin again. What I found was a reason to look beyond myself.

I found communities whose stories deserved to be told with dignity rather than reduced to stereotypes. I found children whose dreams deserved to be nurtured. I found people whose resilience challenged my assumptions. I found a landscape whose natural wealth and cultural richness deserved protection, understanding, and respect.

I also found difficult questions that would stay with me long after that first visit.

How could communities surrounded by natural resources continue to struggle for basic services and opportunities?

How could development become more inclusive, reaching people in remote areas rather than leaving them behind?

How could environmental protection be pursued without disregarding the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on the land?

And how could someone like me—armed with education, professional training, and a growing understanding of the realities before me—contribute, even in a small way, to making things better?

I had no complete answers.

But I had found my reason to begin asking.

And that was enough.

THE BIRTH OF LOVE MINDANAO

That day, something changed in me.

The place I had initially feared became a place I wanted to understand. The people I had worried might reject me became people whose stories I wanted to hear. The environment I had expected to endure became a place I wanted to explore, appreciate, and help protect.

I had arrived in Mindanao looking for a way to put myself back together.

Instead, I discovered that healing could begin when we stopped making ourselves the center of every story.

Sometimes, we begin to find ourselves when we learn to care about something beyond ourselves.

That was the beginning of my love affair with Mindanao.

It was not an uncomplicated love. It was not blind admiration for a place I believed to be perfect. It was a love born from witnessing both promise and hardship, both extraordinary beauty and painful realities.

It was a love that grew because I began to see Mindanao not as an idea created by distant narratives, but as a living, breathing place filled with people, cultures, ecosystems, struggles, and possibilities.

And from that experience, a name gradually took on a meaning far greater than a social media identity.

LOVE MINDANAO.

For me, Love Mindanao became a declaration—a commitment to look beyond prejudice, to question stereotypes, and to recognize the dignity of people whose lives are too often discussed without their voices being heard.

It became an invitation to discover the island beyond the headlines, to appreciate its extraordinary natural and cultural heritage, and to acknowledge the challenges that continue to affect its communities.

It became a reminder that love is not simply about admiring beautiful mountains, pristine rivers, lush forests, magnificent coastlines, or breathtaking landscapes.

Love is also about caring enough to ask whether the communities who live among these resources have access to education, healthcare, safe roads, sustainable livelihoods, and meaningful opportunities.

It is about recognizing that environmental protection and human well-being are inseparable.

It is about understanding that development must not be measured by economic activity or infrastructure alone, but also by whether people can live with dignity, whether ecosystems remain healthy, whether communities are heard, and whether future generations inherit a world worth living in.

And it is about refusing to let fear, indifference, or prejudice have the final word about a place and its people.

I would eventually come to understand that loving Mindanao also meant recognizing its diversity, respecting the distinct identities of its Indigenous Peoples and cultural communities, and acknowledging that their histories, knowledge systems, rights, and aspirations deserve genuine respect.

It meant understanding that no single person could speak for all of Mindanao, and that the most meaningful advocacy begins by listening to those who call it home.

I was only at the beginning of that journey.

There was still so much to learn, so much to question, and so much work to be done.

But my heart had found its direction.

A LOVE THAT MUST MEAN SOMETHING

Looking back, I sometimes ask myself whether accepting that job was a mistake, an option, or destiny.

Perhaps it was a mistake to some people who could not understand why I would leave a familiar and comfortable life for an uncertain future.

Perhaps it was simply an option—a decision made by a man who needed a fresh start.

Or perhaps it was destiny, if destiny is what we call those unexpected turns in life that lead us toward a purpose we could not have imagined beforehand.

I may never know the answer.

What I know is that the decision changed me.

Mindanao taught me that we cannot truly understand a place from a distance. We cannot understand its people through stereotypes, its struggles through headlines alone, or its potential by looking only at what is missing.

We must go there.

We must listen.

We must be willing to unlearn what we thought we knew.

And when we encounter realities that trouble our conscience, we must ask ourselves what we are prepared to do about them.

I do not tell this story because I believe I am a hero. I am not. I am simply someone whose life was changed by an encounter with people and places that challenged his assumptions and awakened his sense of responsibility.

I cannot claim to have all the answers, and I cannot promise that passion alone can overcome deeply rooted problems.

But I believe that meaningful change begins when people care enough to look, listen, learn, and act.

If my story can encourage even one person to visit Mindanao with an open mind, to see beyond the stereotypes, to appreciate its natural and cultural wealth, or to recognize the dignity and aspirations of its communities, then telling this story will have been worthwhile.

If it can inspire someone to protect a forest, support a community initiative, defend the rights of Indigenous Peoples, promote equitable access to education and healthcare, or simply question a prejudice they have carried for years, then perhaps this little blog can become something more than a personal journal.

Perhaps it can become a small voice in a much larger movement for understanding, dignity, environmental stewardship, and inclusive development.

Because Mindanao does not need to be romanticized to be loved.

Its people do not need to be portrayed as helpless to deserve support.

Its problems do not need to be hidden to recognize its beauty.

And its beauty should never be used as an excuse to ignore its problems.

We must be capable of holding both truths in our hearts: that Mindanao is a place of extraordinary promise, and that many of its communities continue to face challenges that demand sustained, thoughtful, and collective action.

That is the kind of love I want to stand for.

A love that sees.

A love that listens.

A love that respects.

A love that questions.

A love that protects.

And, above all, a love that acts.

FOR THE FIRST TIME, I WAS FREE

I arrived in Mindanao afraid of the unknown.

I stayed because I began to understand what I had been missing.

I came searching for a way to heal my own heart.

I found a reason to open it to others.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that the journey was no longer just about me.

It was about the children whose dreams deserved a chance. The communities whose stories deserved to be heard. The Indigenous Peoples whose rights and knowledge deserved respect. The natural ecosystems whose survival matters to both present and future generations. And the people who continue to work toward a better life despite the challenges they face.

I cannot promise that I will change the world.

But I can choose not to look away.

I can choose to learn.

I can choose to speak when speaking matters, to listen when listening is needed, and to use whatever knowledge and abilities I possess in the service of something greater than myself.

That is what Mindanao began to teach me.

That is what I want Love Mindanao to represent.

And that is why this story matters to me.

Love Mindanao is not merely a name. It is a journey, a conviction, and a responsibility.

A reminder that the places we fear may hold the lessons we most need to learn. That the people we misunderstand may become the people who change us. And that sometimes, the most unexpected detour in life leads us exactly where we are meant to be.

I came to Mindanao not knowing what I was looking for.

I found a place that challenged me, humbled me, and gave me a reason to begin again.

And for the first time in a long while, I felt free—not because life had suddenly become easy, but because I had found something worth giving my heart to.

This is my story. This is my beginning. This is Love Mindanao.

And the journey continues.

So help me, God.

The IP Manobo children hungry for learning

Non functional health center for the locals of Sitio Inadan

Timber (falcata) source of livelihood in the area

30km unpaved road connecting San Miguel and Tandag City

Collapsed bridges caused by overflowing of SUBA river

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